


Touch Me Before I Fall

by crazygirlne



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Fluffy Ending, Past Abuse, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 08:02:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12031623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazygirlne/pseuds/crazygirlne
Summary: In a world where human contact usually causes pain, Leonard and Sara find safety in each other.





	Touch Me Before I Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tavyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tavyn/gifts).



> I try to explain it via the story, but just for a quick rundown, in this world, you can have multiple and/or platonic and/or familial soulmates, but they’re the only people you can have skin-to-skin contact with without pain and nausea, which comes in increasing amounts the longer the exposure.
> 
> Happens during the S1 time frame, but some things don’t happen the same and there’s no dying in Destiny. Discussions of past pain/abuse, but happy ending.
> 
> Feedback from ClaudiaRain, who I've basically become unable to function without.
> 
> There’s dangerous weather and fires affecting so much of the country right now, so I just want to say, everyone stay safe.
> 
> Lastly and super importantly, happiest of happy birthdays to my birthday twin, Tavyn!

 

It doesn’t click, at first. Sara hands him her beer, and she goes to dance, feeling his eyes burning into her, the interest licking up her spine. It’s only when she twists the interrupting asshole’s arm up behind his back and feels the familiar wave of stabbing nausea that she realizes it:

She felt no ill effects at the brief, casual contact with Leonard Snart.

And okay, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. His finger just barely grazed the skin of her wrist, and she’s had plenty of years’ worth of training in ignoring the effects of short-term or necessary contact with people who aren’t her soulmates. It’s possible she blocked it out, she decides as she continues fighting with Leonard’s and Mick’s help.

Luckily, most of the other patrons have very little skin exposed. It’s the norm, when people are going to be surrounded by strangers or acquaintances: long sleeves, thin gloves. There’s not much more discomfort in the bar-room brawl.

It’s just fun.

It’s much too long before she gets to be with Leonard one-on-one, but then he shows up in her quarters, a deck of cards in hand. He’s not wearing the gloves he donned once they got back on the Waverider.

Either he’s being reckless, or he too suspects they could be soulmates. If she has to guess based on the measuring gleam in his eye, she’d say it’s the latter. They communicate silently—a waggled deck of cards, a raised eyebrow, a nod, a smirk—and then he’s cross-legged across from her at the foot of her bed.

It’s quiet while they start playing. It’s not a comfortable silence, not exactly, but it’s not awkward either. Instead it’s…

Expectant.

They both know what’s coming, and they’re just seeing who’s going to speak first.

Sara’s almost ready to try—or to just reach out and take his hand to prove it once and for all, she’s not sure which—when he breaks the silence.

“Most people take family for granted,” he says, not pausing in his play, and she follows suit, listening, watching him when she isn’t watching her cards. He keeps his eyes resolutely on the game. “They may not have any other soulmates”—the word is almost a sneer—“but they at least have family.”

“You didn’t?” She keeps her tone as mild as possible, letting herself wonder only fleetingly what it would’ve been like, growing up on guard even around her own parents, unable to turn to them for so much as a hug or a kiss.

“My father,” he says, matching her tone, “was a special kind of asshole. He and my mother weren’t soulmates, but he managed to convince her it would be worth it, being together. He was a cop, respectable and trustworthy, and he made her think it could work.” Leonard plays another card. “I never did get a straight answer about which happened first, but I came along, and he couldn’t touch me without pain, either. He started drinking, and he turned dirty cop. My earliest memories are of him taking my arm, cursing at me and blaming me for the pain, while my mother screamed at him to stop.”

“Leonard–” Sara stops when he shakes his head.

“If I don’t get this out now, I’m never going to, and I think you should know.” His eyes meet hers for a moment, their depths burning with cold fury, and when she nods, he looks down again. “She left eventually. Couldn’t take it anymore, I suppose, not that I blame her. He would get trashed and take my arm, hit me until the nausea from contact was too much for both of us. It wasn’t until after my sister came along that our grandfather tried to step in, but there was only so much he could do. Still, then I had Lisa. It was my first experience with contact without pain, the first person I was allowed to touch without immediate punishment, even if we couldn’t bring ourselves to do it often.

“I got stronger,” he continues, “protecting her. Lewis got more creative as the pain got worse for him, started using whatever weapons were handy. Things got better, for a while, when he realized how useful I was to him. Then a stupid planning choice on his part landed me in juvie, where I met Mick.” He glances at her, then away. “Mick saved me even before he knew what we were. We realized it when he helped me off the floor.

“Those are the only people I’ve had. Lewis made sure I hated contact from the start, and my mother was too scared to make up for it. Mine and Mick’s relationship is fucked up half the time and mutually beneficial the other half. Lisa’s been the only person to give me anything resembling hope that a soulmate would be anything other than another complication.”

He looks up at her now, fury replaced by that contemplative look once more. “So you understand that when I think I may have found another, I can’t exactly just leap for joy.” He drawls the last, and Sara smirks, letting him lead them to a lighter mood following the heavy past.

For the moment, anyway.

“I don’t have the same issues with my soulmates,” she says, “but I’ve…” Sara shakes her head. “People around me get hurt, or I get hurt by the people I care about. It’s never on purpose, but things happen, like a psycho makes a friend stab me and then…”

“And then you’re dead for a year,” he finishes for her, using her words from earlier.

Sara nods. It’s quiet again afterward, waiting. “We can pretend it didn’t happen,” she offers, not sure whether she means it. It’d be better for him, probably, and she needs to focus on working through her blood lust, but it’s not like soulmates are all that common. Some people never have any outside their own family, and just one or two is pretty normal. Honestly, she figured she’d already met all hers.

“Appreciate that,” he says dryly.

It’s not an answer.

Before long, they’re summoned to the bridge, and as Sara moves to leave, Leonard catches her arm.

Her bare arm, with his bare hand.

His touch is gentle, his eyes glued to the point of painless contact, and he slides his hand down to hers, squeezing a moment before meeting her eyes.

“Thanks,” he says, “for listening.”

It’s harder than it should be to look away.

***

Sara pushes the fact that she’s found a new soulmate aside until things on the team are a bit less hectic. It’s not until she has some time to herself for something other than sleep that she lets herself really think about it.

It’s natural enough for Sara to assume that Leonard could be a romantic soulmate for her. For one thing, she’s never had a platonic soulmate who wasn’t family.

Well, Ollie and Nyssa were both her friends at certain points. Still, she doesn’t think it counts as a platonic relationship when you know how the other person sounds as you ride them.

Even without that, though, there’s the fact that there’s an electricity between herself and Leonard that just isn’t there with anyone else on the ship, with anyone else she hasn’t wanted to drag to bed.

The attraction isn’t all physical, either. If they hadn’t touched so soon, she thinks she’d have tried contact before long. While they don’t always agree, she and Leonard are often on the same wavelength, and they complement each other even when they disagree.

They haven’t touched since that first deliberate time, but they’re still pulled toward each other. Sara will scold herself for leaning toward him in front of the team, only for him to do the same a moment later.

In some ways, it seems pointless to her to avoid it, especially the closer they get. Like with Nyssa and with Oliver, there are clearly things they can offer each other, ways they can make each other better. Unlike with the two of them, there aren’t the same obstacles in the way.

The biggest obstacle between her and Leonard, as far as she can tell, is his reluctance to touch. It’s a pretty big one, as far as a physical relationship goes, especially given how nearly impossible it is to have a casual physical relationship with anybody.

The thing is, though, the more she becomes convinced that she and Leonard are good together, that they should be together in every sense of the word, the more terrified she gets, because as she told him, people get hurt. And if there’s nothing to get in their way, it’s going to hurt so, so much more if something happens to either of them.

So she doesn’t make a move, lets him set the pace, lets it be mild flirting with physical closeness that would be reckless between people who weren’t soulmates.

Only, he doesn’t move past that, and before long she finds herself breaking her resolution not to touch him without him making it clear he wants to be touched.

She figures the fact that they’re freezing to death on this damned time ship gives her a pretty good excuse.

***

Leonard looks away as Sara pulls herself close. He doesn’t think any of their skin is actually touching, and he’s not sure the pain would register, even if they weren’t soulmates, over the pain of the cold. He takes a breath, coughing once as his lungs protest, then looks back at her.

It’s Sara.

It’s Sara, and somehow, even without contact, being around her has helped to erase some of the negative associations he has with touch. He wants to touch her, to hold her, to…

He wants too much.

Then again, he’s dying, so if there were ever a time to accept comfort, freely offered, this is probably it.

He takes his left hand and settles it over where her hands clutch at his arm, and he closes his eyes against the pain that part of him still expects despite everything.

It doesn’t come. Sara makes a noise that he thinks is probably meant to be some sort of encouragement, but it comes out a bit strangled. He opens his eyes and takes a shallow breath before he shifts, freeing his arm so he can pull her into his lap and wrap his arms around her. Sara tucks her face against his chest, and he soaks in what warmth he can get from her body against his. They’re too cold to talk, both of them, but he thinks about what he’d like to say, about the future he envisions for them, if everything—or anything, really—goes according to plan.

If they make it out of here alive.

She’ll have her own ideas, of course, but he has a hunch they’ll be able to reconcile any differences.

He moves to run a hand down her back, but the action is painful, his muscles far too tense, so he stills, focusing on the feel of her. It’s possible that it would be getting a little awkward if they were warm enough for him to be fully functional. At least he’s reasonably certain she’s interested in him that way, too.

But he’s never had this. He’s never had a potential lover to hold, to hold him. He’s managed sex before, sure, carefully, but unless he’d gone there with Mick (not that he never considered it), he had no way to experience true physical intimacy without any barriers.

And he has a chance for that, with Sara.

Leonard exhales, doing his best to let everything go.

***

It isn’t quite that easy, of course. After they got out would’ve been a good time to address what was between him and Sara, but of course they’re in the middle of a crisis, complete with Mick pretending to double cross them.

Leonard doesn’t buy it for a second. There are some people, maybe, who can double cross a soulmate, but Mick isn’t one of them. Leonard is Mick’s only person, and he knows it.

He takes it for granted sometimes and should probably fix that, but he never forgets it.

Then there’s tracking down Savage and evading capture and it never feels like they have quite long enough to talk.

They play cards, though, hands occasionally brushing up against each other. She leans into him, once, exhausted after a particularly frustrating mission. They pass drinks back and forth, even in plain view of others, letting fingers linger when there’s no actual need for contact.

He thinks he probably touches her more than he’s ever touched anyone else, and by the time they take down Savage, he doesn’t even have to try not to flinch.

He finds he even craves the contact.

It’s normal, actually, or so he’s heard. Despite how few people everyone can touch, humans are designed to crave contact with others. Soulmates, platonic or otherwise, tend to be very hands-on, making up for the contact they can’t get elsewhere. Before he’d boarded the Waverider, Leonard would’ve sworn his father had effectively beat that desire out of him.

He’s not sure he’s ever been happier to be proven wrong.

Taking down Savage doesn’t stick, which is apparently a recurring thing, and the team has to figure out how to take out the Time Masters first, as well as the Oculus. It goes…

Well, the plan is gorgeous, if Leonard does say so himself, but it goes entirely off the rails, and there are far more close calls than he likes. In the end, though, they get Vandal Savage, for good, and the whole crew is battered and exhausted but alive.

They’re alive, and Sara’s leaning against him in the bridge, and he can feel eyes on them, knows some of the team is wondering whether they’re just being exceptionally reckless or they’re soulmates; none of their skin is touching.

Leonard moves his hand deliberately, sliding it to her exposed arm, and together, he and Sara glare defiantly until everyone looks away.

Damn them all for smiling as they do it.

He catches himself smiling, though, as he looks down as Sara, so he supposes he can’t be too upset with the team.

***

Time passes, filled with more touch than he ever expected.

They’re tangled together in her bunk the first time he tells her he loves her, nothing else between them.

They’re holding hands when she tells him she feels the same.

They’re helping each other escape a mission gone south when Sara proposes, and he shoves her over the top of the wall with a fervent, “Fuck, Sara, yes.”

They’re kissing much too long after exchanging their vows, until the onlookers start to protest good-naturedly. In unison, they give the middle finger to their closest friends and family.

They’re together in the bathroom, him kneeling at her feet with a hand on her knee while she perches on the edge of the bathtub, when they find out they’re going to be parents.

They’re in constant contact through labor, and Leonard doesn’t let go of her hand when he strokes the face of the newborn cradled in her arms, who’s still screaming.

His son quiets at his touch, watching Leonard with a stare that reminds him much of his own before the baby turns and nuzzles at Sara.

There’s no pain, but there’s so much love that Leonard feels like his heart might burst.

***

Their son, Sebastian, seems completely and utterly normal at first, fitting in well with the vast majority of the population who can touch and be touched by his parents, who will know things like hugs after a bad day and kisses after a skinned knee. He’s rocked to sleep every night, and Leonard occasionally worried aloud that they’ll manage to spoil him.

Sara just tells Leonard to go back to sleep and curls around him until he does.

When they finally bring Sebastian aboard the Waverider, though, they realize he is nothing like normal.

It happens by chance.

Typically, babies aren’t passed around to anyone outside the immediate family; it’s frowned upon to cause infants pain just to see whether anyone with ties to the child is a soulmate. As soon as everyone is in the bridge, though, the Waverider shift unexpectedly. Sara, uncharacteristically off balance with the baby in her arms, loses her footing just long enough to bump herself and Sebastian into Mick.

Sara winces, but Sebastian just gurgles happily at Mick.

“What the hell just happened?” Leonard demands of Gideon, mentally preparing for the fastest way to get everyone strapped in if necessary.

“Apologies, Mr. Snart. There was a temporal disturbance, but it seems to have been resolved.”

“Do you know what caused it?” Rip moves to the console, frantically pressing buttons.

“Of course. It was a necessary paradox.”

“A what?” Ray asks, instantly curious.

“If not for the turbulence on the stationary ship,” Gideon explains calmly, “Mrs. Snart would not have bumped into Mr. Rory. In that case, we may never have found out that Sebastian will not experience pain from anybody currently aboard this ship. Because the temporal disturbance was required in order to cause the change that created the disturbance, it’s a paradox. However, some are not only stable, but necessary. Sebastian was always meant to have this large a family.”

There’s silence as it sinks in what Gideon’s said.

The part about Sebastian and his family, at least; Leonard’s not sure anybody but Gideon herself followed the part about the paradox.

“Everyone?” Leonard asks, meeting Sara’s eyes before he looks down at their son.

Leonard had almost nobody he could touch without fear of pain growing up. Sebastian will have more than anybody Leonard’s ever heard of.

“Yes, Mr. Snart,” Gideon answers. “The entire team in its current makeup.”

“Can I hold him?” Mick asks, and he cradles him even more gently than Leonard expects when Sara carefully passes him over. After a few minutes, Kendra asks for her turn, then the professor does, then Amaya, and so it goes. Leonard watches in amazement as his child is passed around the room, the team being careful not to touch each other (with a few exceptions, some Leonard was aware of and some he wasn’t), Sebastian cooing and chirping happily the entire time.

“Well,” Sara says, tucking herself into Leonard’s side as she, too, watches, “maybe you were right after all.” When he arches a brow at her, she grins and nods at where Jax is looking lovingly down at what’s probably the first baby he’s ever held. “If any baby can be spoiled, it’ll be our son.”

He puts an arm around Sara and pulls her close. “There are worse things to happen, I’m sure.”

She relaxes against him until she’s ready to retrieve their son, and Mick rests a hand on Leonard’s shoulder. Leonard rolls his eyes at Mick before returning his friend’s smirk.

 _Yeah,_ he thinks. _There are worse things to happen._


End file.
